Hi All,
I managed to get my hands on a Model S. Now, I have a couple of questions:

Is there anyone that has bought a decent and safe J1772 Adapter and used it
successfully on their Model S?

Is anyone aware if the Mennekes charge stations (mainly in Canberra but other places as well) that Better Place installed are still working? Plugshare says: "only available for members before BetterPlace went bust" but I heard conflicting information.

The portable charger - it can be broken down into two parts - the part that connects to the car and the part that connects to the power socket. Is it possible to get that power socket-to-adapter in a different plug style? I am thinking 450V tri-phase or J1772maybe?

Johny American Teslas don't get confused. we have euro teslas. if the betterplace stations are working you'll need a type 2 to type 2 cable available form tesla directly but more importantly you'll need a RFID card for betterplace.

a J1772 male vehicle inlet to Type 2 female vehicle outlet (J1772 adapter) are not approved of in the standard. therefore can't be certified and it's hard to qualify the use of the word "safe"

There is no pigtails for your portable charger for australia besides the one you brought with your car.

The BetterPlace stations do not charge unless you have an RFID card, right? Which I don't so assume buying the cable is pointless? Or maybe a card can be sourced from some enterprising person?

Which standard does not approve of the J1772? The J1772 standard I assume?

In terms of "safe", I am concerned about frying up the electronics in my shiny new toy and getting warranty voided by the use of a cable that was not sourced from Tesla. Now THAT would be unideal.

I have the optional second charger installed so amperage should not be an issue.

MDK, Thanks for letting us know about the RAC electric highway. That is one super-cool idea. Is that your Tesla in the video? And I assume since you use that cable, it does not pose damage risk to the car?

Mircea wrote:
MDK, Thanks for letting us know about the RAC electric highway. That is one super-cool idea. Is that your Tesla in the video? And I assume since you use that cable, it does not pose damage risk to the car?

Yes that's my Tesla, and yes the J1772 adapter is fine - although the Electric Highway also has DC fast chargers at each location (which is 6 times as fast as the J1772) so I mostly use that (via CHAdeMO adapter from Tesla) with the J1772 adapter only for testing (and as a backup in case the fast charger is already in use or not functional)

yep so betterplace no good unless you have an RFID. best to start by asking at the places they are located to see if they have one on site. most places signed up for one because they have an EV and kept them because they still work for them at least.

I doubt the cable will fry anything enough people have been successful with it. but yes there are potential warranty/insurance concerns as tesla can say that's a non approved cable and the owner of the charging stations can also say you used a non approved cable.

FYI J1772 and mennekes are all covered in the IEC standard 62196. which I believe Australian standards have adopted unaltered.

The J1772 adapter from EVNomics (as mentioned by MDK) is the one you want.

The intuitive way to connect the L1 pin on the J1772 side is to the L1 pin on the mennekes side, however this means you would limit the max charging rate available. This is because the tesla on board charger is actually three chargers, one for each 'phase'. If you have dual chargers in your car, you would likely never notice that limitation.

Anyway, the EVNomics adapter bridges L1 on the J1772 side to L1,L2,L3 on the mennekes side, and you get the full capability of the on board charger.

Cool.
Thank you for that guys, appreciate it.
The EVnomics cable looks very short on the website. MDK, would I need an extender cord for that or you can easily use it?
In other news, I just did a weekend Can to Mel return run and the superchargers came in superhandy.
I found a very small difference (in terms of convenience) between driving the EV and a petrol-powered car. The difference was easily offset by the free cost of travel.

Mircea wrote:
The EVnomics cable looks very short on the website. MDK, would I need an extender cord for that or you can easily use it?

The cables on J1772 charging stations (at least the ones I've used) are quite long, as they are designed to plug into cars without requiring an adapter or extension lead.
The EVnomics adapter plugs into the end of the existing cable.

Gabz wrote: yep so betterplace no good unless you have an RFID. best to start by asking at the places they are located to see if they have one on site. most places signed up for one because they have an EV and kept them because they still work for them at least.

If that is the case - see if they would be up for just supergluing the RFID tag to the sensor

The Better Place chargers in Canberra are now supposed to be working with a card from ACTEW. I was given an ex-Better Place cable to try with my iMiEV but could not get it to work. I am just now investigating inside. The J1772 end comes apart. The Mennekes end seems welded. At the J1772 end there is an encapsulated little board inside the plug which might be a RFID receptor thingy and the cable is numbered. Perhaps the RFID was cable-specific? I am looking to see is that can be bypassed so that the cable can be just wired up to work with the ACTEW posts.